Splash! You are in Costa Rica's Blue Eco Blog. Echoing Eco for Oceans and Waters. Giving voice to dolphins and whales, their waves and their waters, and all denizens of the deep. News they think you should use. Dive in.

The blue-water pelagic ecosystem offshore of southwestern Costa
Rica’s Isla del Caño Biological Reserve and Corcovado National Park took
serious one-two punches during the past few months, and it remains to
be seen whether things will ever return to conditions of the past. The
area around, not inside, the two protected areas is probably Costa
Rica’s most critical dolphin and whale breeding and feeding waters. But
the whales are gone, and the dolphins have changed. The fishing has been
off, and boats are headed elsewhere to find fish.

The first few months of the year shaped up to be one of the
best seasons for marine life in Costa Rican waters in recent memory. The
cool currents of La Niña stoked a profusion of big pelagic species like
dolphins, whales, tuna, turtles and giant mantas. Divers and snorkelers
from the Southern Zone reported more giant mantas seen at Caño Island
in February and March than in the past 15 years put together. Flights
and boats searching for marine life in the area were finding dolphin
superpods, groups of dolphins numbering in the hundreds to thousands,
all over the area. There were many mating and birthing humpback whales, a
large pod of false killer whales, orcas, fin whales and even three blue
whales, including a baby, feeding on giant bait balls of small fish
brought up from the depths during the normal strong upwelling at this
time of year. There were uncountable hectares of turtles, tuna and
billfish. There were even a few big sharks.

Then, a giant foreign
ship showed up and began drilling deep holes in the ocean floor not far
from Caño Island, in the name of scientific research. Within a day, the
whales were gone. Search time for dolphins from a plane went from a half
hour or less to two hours or more. Most dolphin superpods broke into
smaller groups and headed north toward offshore Quepos. Others broke
into smaller groups and moved inshore, closer to the coast. Dolphins
that stayed in the area developed a strange skin rash.

The spewing
ship kept at it for a month. Great areas of waters turned from marine
blue to metallic brown and green. The day after the ship left, a new one
showed up towing many kilometers of giant air guns blasting extremely
loud sounds repetitively. A week later they were still at it. Drake Bay
ecotourism and sportfishing boats foolish enough to still be looking in
their favorite hot spots were told to leave the area by burly men on a
yacht out of Quepos. Scuba divers at Caño Island could hear the giant
booms of the guns during their dives.

No environmental impact
study was done for the area. No dolphin and whale observers were onboard
to look out for cetacean safety. There were no Costa Ricans onboard
until someone noticed. Many questions were never answered. No notice was
given to area residents of what was going to happen.

Since the
drilling, no whales have been reported in the area – the longest period
without whale sightings that anglers and guides in Drake Bay can
remember. No large dolphin superpods have been seen. The fishing is bad.
No wonder so few tourists seem to want to visit the area right now.

This
serious lack of ocean oversight has left locals wondering what is next.
There are reports of making a permanent drilling riser here and of
laying an undersea cable from the mainland to Caño Island and then
offshore to the rig.

Let’s hope an environmental impact study is
involved and that locals dependent on the area’s marine life are given
some notice so they can find new jobs. Because what’s next could be the
knockout punch for a good chunk of Costa Rica’s famous marine life:
whales, dolphins, turtles – and fishers and divers.

Email costacetacea@gmail.com with contributions to The Big Blue, or check out www.costacetacea.com for more information.

Future
offshore Osa gold mining or other drilling might cause denizens even
bigger problems. Offshore Osa likely has a lot of gold.
The worlds first offshore gold mining operation was off of Sirena, in
Corcovado National Park. Since the park is protected a measley
500 meters offshore, seems like someone might have been thinking
about big gold in the deep blue sea of the Osa peninsula.

‘Pelagic Park’ Would Help Save Spinner Dolphins

From The Tico Times, Posted: Friday, September 05, 2008 - By Shawn Larkin

The most hightech, large-scale fishing in Costa Rica’s oceans is commercial tuna fishing.

From hardworking crew and helicopters to radar and satellites, these operations take catching fish very seriously.

They
drop enormous nets bigger than a city block into the sea to catch vast
quantities of an assortment of marine life. They are after mostly tuna,
among the most valuable fish of any denizens of the deep.

When
fishing boats find a big group of spinner dolphins, they find some of
their ever-present sidekicks: giant yellowfin and bigeye tuna. Mostly
seen only below the surface, the tuna would not be so easy to locate
without the help of the dolphins, which must surface regularly to
breathe. The giant tuna pack together around the dolphins that find
their food for them. Here, offshore of southern Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula, the big tuna and the spinner dolphins are always together.

I reckon the dolphins think: “Now that the moon
is full, the current is from the southwest at two knots and the wind is
calm, a bigspaced swell is coming in from west-southwest, it rained
last night and the layers of water temperatures changed a lot, it’s a
sunny day, almost high noon, and I think I know where all those other
dolphins are going, and the orcas will not hunt today, and the tuna
boats will be busy for a few hours – hope my friends and family make it
out! – we should go hunt the south end of the Osa drop-off upwelling.”

And I reckon the tuna are thinking just one thing: “Follow the dolphins.”

Follow
the dolphins. Just as the seabirds, the sailfish and the marlin, the
sharks and the whales, the sportfishing captains and the commercial
tuna-fishing fleets do. Follow the dolphins; they have the best
actionable ocean intelligence. The dolphins have the network. They are
always with the food.

In the Osa drop-off upwelling,
where dense, cooler and nutrient-rich water is pushed toward the ocean
surface, the tuna, birds and other marine life are nearly always with
the dolphins. All a commercial fishing fleet has to do is find the birds
on a special radar, send up a helicopter or two to check it out and
call in coordinates, start corralling the dolphins with the helicopter
and explosives dropped from the helicopter, put down small, fast chase
boats to further corral the dolphins, use the ship to corral the
dolphins even more, and then put down a very big net around the dolphins
and associated marine life with the help of a special net boat.

If you do this, you get a lot of tuna in the net below the dolphins, and it’s worth a lot of money.

Sadly,
this kind of bonanza is unsustainable. The longer-lived, more slowly
reproducing spinners will probably die out before the tuna are
exhausted, perhaps giving the tuna a chance to recuperate, because once
the dolphins are gone, no one will be able to find the tuna. But how
will the tuna find food without the dolphins?

Fishing
industry insiders have told me that dozens of spinner dolphins are
killed every day by busy boats. They die most frequently when their
narrow, smiling mouths get stuck in the holes of the nets. Hundreds more
must be manhandled by diving crews and thrown out of the nets daily,
lest the nets are damaged.

Other Osa dolphin
species, such as bottlenose and spotted dolphins, are somewhat likelier
to swim out if a small piece of one end of the net is put down for a
while, a procedure known as a “backdown.”

Backdowns do not help Osa’s spinner dolphins, however; they stay in the net.

Tuna fishermen say the spinners are tontos,
stupid, because they do not swim away from the ship and out of the net.
They seem unable to stop surfing the ship’s waves. The same trait the
tourist boats love dooms the poor spinners.

Time for ‘Pelagic Park’

The blue-water pelagic (open-ocean) ecosystem domain of the Osa’s spinner dolphins is probably the most productive ecosystem in Costa Rica,
perhaps in the tropical marine world. According to former members of
Jacques Cousteau’s legendary conservation ship, Calypso, and the BBC’s
top “Blue Planet” underwater cameramen, offshore Osa is the richest
tropical blue water they have seen anywhere on the planet (see sidebar).

The
dolphins’ domain is an area between five and 20 nautical miles from
Caño Island Biological Reserve. The reserve’s waters currently extend
only about two nautical miles; this is not enough to protect large
animals such as dolphins and tuna. To protect large marine animals, you
need a Corcovado or Amistad-sized park at sea.

For
many years, around the world, protected marine areas have proven to
increase catches in surrounding areas. With a big enough pelagic park,
or better still, parks and corridors, tuna-fishing boats could make
money in the long term, not just short.

An astounding number of big, amazing animals
live in the Osa drop-off upwelling area and would be protected along
with the spinners. Fin, sei, Bryde’s, humpback and blue whales and orcas
frequent this little upwelling. Sailfish, marlin, tuna, manta rays,
whale sharks, turtles, beaked whales, pilot whales, pseudorcas,
bottlenose dolphins and spotted dolphins are found here in some of the
highest concentrations in the world.

A special area of the Osa drop-off upwelling, the clearest waters in Costa Rica,
would be an excellent place to prohibit commercial fishing, save the
spinners and allow boaters and divers to see and snorkel with dolphins
and other amazing marine life in the big blue.

Many people in Costa Rica,
including yours truly, already benefit greatly from tourists visiting
the giant dolphin pods and other marine life congregations off the Osa.
But the commercial fishing fleet will end it soon for us all if some
sort of pelagic park is not created.

The spinners
are dying. There seem to be a lot fewer little spinners now then there
were in the past. The pods no longer stretch to the horizon in every
direction.

A park is the only solution. Just as Costa Rica
has demonstrated to the world the value of protecting functioning
terrestrial ecosystems, we can show the world the same goes for the
ocean. Costa Rica needs to make peace with the ocean as well as the rain forest. It’s time to set aside a meaningful, not miniscule, part of Costa Rica’s biggest ecosystem: the open ocean.

Dolphins from this pod still being killed in July 2012.
Should Costa Rica kill them for tuna?
The video in the link below is Shawn
Larkin freediving and singing with the spinner dolphin superpod of Osa,
Costa Rica. Some people net dolphins, some people put lines and hooks
in the water with dolphins. Some people sing and swim with them. What
do you think is the right answer?

Why does KETO Costa Rica and
Mar Viva and PROMAR,do nothing to help these spinner dolphins? They
will take your money though and praise themselves for dolphin
conservation, but what about our largest dolphin pod?.

Why do so
many Costa Ricans cry about Faeroe Island and Japan and Greenland
Cetacean kills, yet do NOTHING YEAR AFTER YEAR, to help their own
resident spinner dolphin superpod from being killed in net and lines?

Why
have so called Costa Rican dolphin conservation organizations not said
one word about our Osa spinner dolphin superpod, the biggest resident
dolphin superpod IN THE WORLD!
why?

$$$$ and corruption
Thats why.

Sharks are getting a lot harder to fish in Costa Rica, as the thieves have hardly left any.
The money now is in tuna that swim with dolphins, and its a lot more profit if you Ticos keep looking the other way por favor.

At
least the other countries try to defend their sick atrocities. We
Costa Ricans try to hide ours by whining and directing attention to
others.

The voice of the vast majority of ocean users is heard and they are not catch and release billfishers.

Fishers should always have access to most of the worlds oceans, not
just for sport but to eat! But the world does need some places in the
ocean to be free of nets and lines. Catching and releasing endangered billfish is not sport fishing and not as many people do it as some would have you think.

The crazy well funded, massivly sponsered, internationally super influencial Billfish Foundation took a big wave over the bow when the Prime Minister of Australia,
backed by the people of one of the most ocean savy nations on earth,
said our oceans are for a lot more than just catch and release
billfishing. The Billfish Foundation has waged a campaign against marine
protected areas, encouraging members to come out and help stop creation
of marine protected areas

Latin America's greatest ocean hero, Laura Chinchilla, granted future
Costa Ricans a much better chance of sustainably utilizing our Oceans
into the future. The sad free for all of too powerful special interests
will now be controlled with vision directed to the people and the
future by a new Vice Minister of Aguas and Mares. Wow! No thats how
you do it! Seems now the voices of all groups of ocean users, not just
the most connected screaming special interests, will have a say. Now is
time for Costa Ricans to speak up about what they know about our
oceans, and help conserve it. Have you heard about the largest dolphin
pod in the world, the spinner dolphins of the Osa peninsula and Cano
Island? Aaaa, happens to be they need a park! They live near to famous
protected areas Corcovado National Park and Cano Island Biological
Reserve, BUT, they live in waters attacked by nets and lines. This Park
or protected area, needs to be south and west of Cano Island to at
least a distance of 30 nautical miles to help these spinners. NOT just 8
miles from the island as some are saying! 8 miles is not enough to
protect the biggest dolphin pod in the world and Golfito and Puerto
Jimenez need to make a lot money in the long run from conserving these
dolphins, not killing them for short term collapsing profits.